Huber et al., 2002 - first description of Nanoarchaeum equitans:
Cells of ‘
N. equitans’ are spherical, and only about 400 nm in diameter. They grow attached to the surface of a specific archaeal host, a new member of the genus
Ignicoccus. The distribution of the ‘
Nanoarchaeota’ is so far unknown. Owing to their unusual ss rRNA sequence, members remained undetectable by commonly used ecological studies based on the polymerase chain reaction. ‘
N. equitans’ harbours the smallest archaeal genome; it is only 0.5 megabases in size.
Waters et al., 2003 - genome of Nanoarchaeum equitans published: The hyperthermophile
Nanoarchaeum equitans is an obligate symbiont growing in coculture with the crenarchaeon
Ignicoccus. Ribosomal protein and rRNA-based phylogenies place its branching point early in the archaeal lineage, representing the new archaeal kingdom
Nanoarchaeota. The
N. equitans genome (490,885 base pairs) encodes the machinery for information processing and repair, but lacks genes for lipid, cofactor, amino acid, or nucleotide biosyntheses. It is the smallest microbial genome sequenced to date, and also one of the most compact, with 95% of the DNA predicted to encode proteins or stable RNAs. Its limited biosynthetic and catabolic capacity indicates that
N. equitans’ symbiotic relationship to
Ignicoccus is parasitic, making it the only known archaeal parasite. Unlike the small genomes of bacterial parasites that are undergoing reductive evolution,
N. equitans has few pseudogenes or extensive regions of noncoding DNA. This organism represents a basal archaeal lineage and has a highly reduced genome.